Part 13

Indeed among the men who practised this branch of art, I have known only two who in personal intercourse gave any complete indication of the humorous powers they possessed. Perhaps neither Phil May nor Fred Barnard have yet received their full meed of praise, and yet in them, rather than in their better known contemporaries, the tradition of the earlier humorists survives. In one sense they may be said to have shared between them the mantle of John Leech, and they possessed this quality in common, that their perception of the sources of laughter in life was as clearly betrayed in personal association as in the work that came from their hand. Phil May’s face was in itself a highly-coloured print that made an instant appeal to any one endowed even with a most rudimentary sense of humour, and his talk, though it affected no brilliancy, very clearly revealed the fact that the little pageant of life which came within the range of his vision struck itself at once into humorous outline. He hardly saw life, indeed, in any other frame, and the few finely selected lines with which he registered the images that presented themselves to his imagination seemed by instinctive preference to exclude and to dismiss those graver realities that were not his especial concern. And yet so keen and so sure was his touch of life that now and again his hand would outrun his purpose, and leave, even upon the slightest drawing, a suggestion of almost tragic import underlying its laughing message. Fred Barnard was a humorist through and through--at work or at play his eye lighted unerringly on whatever might enrich his humorous experience, and he was quick to detect, though never with any lack of urbanity, the little foibles of those with whom he was brought into contact.

But I suppose it is to the stage that one’s thoughts must naturally turn for the most telling exposition of this particular quality. Nearly all the comedians I have known have seemed to accept it as a part of the duty which their profession imposes on them, that they should be as amusing in the world as in the theatre. It cannot be said, according to my own experience, that they have always been successful, and I may even go so far as to say that the laboured efforts of the wilfully comic man mark off in remembrance some of the dullest hours I have passed. The penalty of the perpetual jester very often, as one would think, a grievous burden to himself, falls sometimes with even heavier incidence upon those he has doomed to be amused.

I know it is a prevalent belief among Americans that we English are wholly devoid of that sense of humour in which many of their own countrymen undoubtedly excel; and it may perhaps, therefore, shock them to learn that, to a taste differently educated, the unremitting efforts of some of their professional jesters are apt on occasion to appear a little overstrained. But in some natures the appetite for the ceaseless flow of comic anecdote is swiftly satisfied, and the man who will insist upon unpacking his wallet of well-worn stories for the intended delight of his fellows may, if he is not watchful of the effect he is producing, induce in the mind of his audience a mood of settled sadness, that not even the genius of a Dickens could lift or lighten.

This haunting fear lest conversation should at any point take a serious note--which I cannot help thinking characteristic of many Americans--is often to be found in our own country in the person of the comedian by profession. It existed perhaps in a lesser degree in J. L. Toole than any other representative of his calling whom I have intimately known. What rendered Toole delightful in companionship was rarely anything memorable that he said, for he made no effort to pose as a wit, and his reminiscent humour, which he could always summon at need, was for the most part introduced in illustration of some point of character humorously perceived and presented. There are critics who have questioned his appeal as a comedian in the theatre, but no one brought into personal contact with him could be left in any doubt as to the swiftness and sureness of his vision in detecting and enjoying the little foibles of those around him. In any company, whatever its composition, his mind got quickly to work upon each individuality in the group; and, although he might not join largely in the conversation, he loved to impart to the companion by his side his keen sense of enjoyment of the conflict and interplay of character as it presented itself at the table.

Toole was a constant guest at those pleasant little suppers in the Beefsteak Room of the Lyceum Theatre over which Irving so gracefully presided; and if one had the good fortune to be his neighbour it was always delightful to watch the expression of his swiftly-glancing, laughing eyes and mobile mouth, as they mirrored, in hardly-restrained amusement, his inward enjoyment of the changing humours of the scene. Nothing characteristic escaped him, however widely divergent the personalities that came within the range of his vision; but his quickness of perception, ever ready to register and record the little foibles of each member of the company, bred in him no feeling of resentment, but seemed rather to add to the rich store of enjoyment which, in his happier moods, life always afforded him. I say in his happier moods, because even in the earlier days of our friendship, when his vitality was unimpaired, his exuberant high spirits were subject to sudden clouds of deep depression that seemed for the time to banish all laughter from his life.

Like Irving, he was an inveterately late sitter, and the many occasions that found them together--either at the theatre or at the Garrick Club--rarely witnessed their parting till the morning hours were far spent. In Toole’s case, I know, this reluctance to break in upon the long duration of these social hours sprang in part out of a haunting terror of the sadder thoughts that might overtake him when he was driven back upon himself. He would often confess to me, as we drove home, his constant dread of these night fears, that were chiefly dominated at that time by the recurring image of his only son, whose early death remained with him to the end as an ineffaceable source of sorrow. And yet, while we talked of these sadder things, it was sometimes irresistibly comic to notice, as we drew towards his house, how this deeper grief would then be exchanged for a terror of a nearer kind, for he was always at these moments very conscious that his persistently late habits--so often repented of, but never reformed--would surely draw down upon him severe domestic rebuke. And even when the cab had reached his door, he would hold me prisoner in whispered converse in order to postpone, as long as he could, the dread moment when he would have to face the salutary lecture that was in store for him.

But for the most part he was the gayest and most light-hearted of companions, forcing out of the most unhopeful material a rich yield of fun and frolic. At home or abroad he was never at a loss for the means of filling an empty day. Sometimes, in his ceaseless tendency towards practical joking, he would place himself in positions that other men might have found embarrassing and even dangerous. But there was something so infectious in his humour, and in his good humour, that even on the Continent, where he could speak no language but his own, he was always able to extricate himself with success from difficulties that would have left many graver men without resource.

He dearly loved the excitement of the gaming table, whether at Monte Carlo or elsewhere; and I remember, during a holiday that we passed together at Aix-les-Bains, that he did his best to imperil the good effects of his cure by his constant attendance at the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs. It was difficult to drag him from the table, however late the hour, for his pathetic reply to every remonstrance took the form of a solemn promise that he would absolutely go to bed as soon as the little pile before him was exhausted; a reply, the humour of which he was himself only half-conscious, for it pointed to the inevitable loss that was the final result of all his gambling transactions. After a night wherein he had been more than usually successful in exhausting the ready cash he carried about him, we made our way in the morning to the little bank in the main street of Aix-les-Bains, in order that he might make a fresh draft upon his letter of credit.

But he did not at once reveal to the clerk in charge his serious intent. Tapping lightly at the closed window of the _guichet_, he inquired, in broken English, which he appeared strangely to believe would be somehow comprehensible to his foreign interlocutor, whether the bank would be prepared to make him a small advance upon a gold-headed cane which he carried in his hand. The request, as might be supposed, was somewhat briskly dismissed, and the little window was abruptly closed in his face. Toole retired apparently deeply dejected by the refusal of his prayer; but in a few minutes he returned to the attack, having in the meantime provided himself with fresh material for a new financial proposition. Hastening out into the little market that lay near the bank, he hurriedly purchased from one of the fish-stalls a small pike that had been caught in the lake, and, having added to this a bunch of carrots, he returned to the bank, where he carefully arranged these proffered securities on the counter, enforced by the addition of his watch and chain, a three-penny bit, and a penknife. When all was ready he again tapped softly at the window, and, in a voice that was broken by sobs, implored the clerk, in view of his unfortunate position, to accept these ill-assorted articles in pledge for the small sum which was needed to save him from starvation. The clerk, by this time grown indignant, requested him to leave the establishment, explaining to him in emphatic terms, and in such English as he could command, that they only made advances upon circular notes or letters of credit. At the last-named word Toole’s saddened face suddenly broke into smiles, and, producing his letter of credit, he handed it to the astonished clerk, with the added explanation that he would have offered that at first if he had thought the bank cared about it, but that the porter at the hotel had told him the bankers of Aix liked fish better.

This is only a sample of the kind of adventure that Toole loved to create for himself and which he carried through with the keenest zest and enjoyment. His invention in such matters never flagged, and I have often been his companion through the whole of an idle day, during which he would keep us both fully employed in the prosecution of these boyish frolics, that may seem foolish enough in narration, but were irresistible in their appeal, owing to the unalloyed pleasure they brought him in their progress. I have known many men who deem themselves adepts at this kind of sport, but none who were so convincing in their methods--none, certainly, who took such an honest pleasure in their work, or who used such infinite pains in carrying the projected little plot to a successful issue.

Once at Ramsgate he contrived to relieve the tedium of a Sunday afternoon by calling at nearly every house in a long and respectable terrace, charged with a mission that was foredoomed to failure. As each door was opened Toole stood on the step, his face distorted by signs of emotion, that for the moment deprived him of all powers of speech, and when at last, in response to the angry inquiry of a maid-servant, he contrived to regain a measure of self-control, it was only to beg, in tearful accents, for the loan of “a small piece of groundsel for a sick bird.” As door after door was slammed in his face, his high spirits correspondingly increased, his only fear being, as he afterwards explained to me, lest some one of the peaceful inhabitants whose Sabbath repose he had so ruthlessly disturbed should, by an evil chance, have possessed the remedy he so persistently sought.

SITTING AT A PLAY

The child’s love of the drama begins long before there is any thought of a playhouse. To escape from life in order to rediscover it in mimic form, would seem to rank among the earliest of human impulses. We are all born actors, though some of us--and this is true even of those who adopt the stage as a profession--would seem occasionally to part with this primitive instinct in later life. But an average child has no sooner entered this world than he finds himself pursued by the longing to create another: he has scarcely had time to recognise his own identity before he seeks to hide it beneath the mask of an alien personality. How far the youthful histrion believes himself to be a lion when he crawls across the drawing-room carpet on all fours, and roars from behind the sofa, is perhaps open to argument. My own belief is that he is already so much of an artist as to be in no way deceived, but of his desire to impose upon the credulity of others there can, I think, be no question. But the limits of histrionic enjoyment are even here sometimes overstepped, as, for example, when a maturer rival in the art, boasting a louder roar, approaches too closely to the confines of absolute illusion. The enjoyment of the art as an art is then rudely disturbed, and, shaken with sudden terror, the infant Roscius is once more driven back upon that actual world from which it had been his pride and desire to escape.

This may be cited as an early instance of the intemperate employment of the resources of realism, which in later life, when sitting at a play, we have so often just reason to deplore. Again, the sudden assumption by a too eager elder of a woolly hearth-rug may ruin at a stroke the child’s purely imaginative vision that he is in the society of a bear. Natural terror expels in an instant that higher emotion which the drama is designed to create. The child recognises that the irrefutable laws of the art have been rudely broken, to his own discomfort; and it is always interesting to note on such occasions with what quick and easy resource he will suddenly change the whole subject and scope of the mimic performance, imperiously demanding that the bear shall be exchanged for a horse, or some other domestic animal, whose milder tendencies may be the more readily endured, even when the actor is forgetful of the proper restraints of his art.

It is what survives of the child in us that makes us all playgoers, although in the early days of our playgoing the unsuspected resources of illusion which the theatre can command are often hard to endure. It is, I suppose, the experience of most children--it certainly was mine--that certain critical moments in drama, clearly foreseen and eagerly anticipated, nevertheless prove in realisation too thrilling and too intense for pure delight; and I can recall occasions, such desired moments being clearly in view, when I would address a whispered request to one of my elders that I might be permitted to watch the ensuing scene from the safe vantage ground of the corridor at the back of the dress circle. The small glass window in the red baize door provided just that added veil of distance which rendered the sufferings of the persons on the stage artistically tolerable. But the crisis once past--a crisis generally signalised by the explosion of a pistol--I was eager to return to my seat in order to appreciate with unabated enjoyment the consequences of an act of violence I had not had the courage to witness.

It is remarkable how little, in those very early days of playgoing, we are at all concerned with the personality of the actor. The story is all-absorbing, and in the poignant interest in the persons of the story, all memory of the performer as a separate entity is submerged and effaced. I had no thought at that time whether the actor was good or bad. His performance appeared to me to be inevitable and inevitably perfect. The day when he takes separate existence, apart from the character he is presenting, marks a revolution in the life of the playgoer, a revolution that is destined henceforward to complicate his emotions, with never again any possible return to that earlier and more confiding attitude when the illusion of the scene is absolute and complete. It is difficult even to recall the names of the actors who first greatly stirred me. They hardly stain my memory, for in my mind they had no separate existence. But with this revolution is born a new kind of enjoyment, that carries richer recollections. The limitless world of illusion shrinks to a narrower kingdom, but its triumphs are more vivid and more enduring: the sense of assumption and disguise is no longer so complete or so convincing, but the message of revelation, when it comes, brings with it a higher pleasure.

Nothing lives longer in remembrance, or pictures itself more vividly, than the first impression of the performance of a great actor. Phelps was the earliest of my heroes of this more sophisticated time, and the first of his performances I can recall was that of Falstaff in _King Henry IV._ produced at Drury Lane. Walter Montgomery was the Hotspur of the occasion, and young Edmund Phelps figured as Prince Hal. First impressions are hard to supplant, and the visual presentment of Falstaff even now always takes the form and shape assigned to him by the elder Phelps on that memorable evening. I saw him many times afterwards--in _Othello_ and _King John_, in Mephistopheles, in Bayle Bernard’s version of Goethe’s play, in Wolsey, in Sir Pertinax M‘Sycophant, and in John Bull; and, although the more critical spirit of a later hour left him shorn of some part of that perfection I thought was his when I first saw him upon the stage, he ranks even now in my recollection as a great and gifted exponent of a great tradition. In his personality there was little to allure. It was rugged and bereft of many of the lighter graces that are calculated to win an audience; but his voice was incomparable, and the earnestness of the artist beyond reproach. Nor could variety of resource be denied him: he seemed equally equipped for his task as King John, Wolsey, or Falstaff, or as Bottom in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_. He fought his way to a front rank in the profession at a time when older playgoers were full of memories of men who were perhaps his superiors--of Kemble, Kean, and, more recently, of Macready. But whatever he owed to any of them--and I do not suppose he was ever tempted to deny his debt--it is impossible not to concede to him a rare measure of individual power that must always leave him his due rank among the English interpreters of Shakespeare.

It must have been my first vision of Charles Fechter which enabled me to realise as by a flash how much Phelps suffered by lack of personal charm and grace. In those days I had not seen Fechter in Shakespeare. I knew him only as the victorious lover and the conquering hero of romantic drama. But, however conventional the material upon which his talent was employed, the glamour of his personality exercised an overpowering fascination.

To the youth of both sexes Fechter’s foreign accent constituted a charm in itself. The rising cadence of his voice struck heroically on the ear, and the swifter and freer gesture which came of his Gallic origin added something of extra fascination to the unquestionably great gifts with which he was endowed. In those days of the old Lyceum, when he was acting in melodramas like _The Duke’s Motto_ and _Bel Demonio_, Miss Kate Terry was constantly his partner and the two together seemed to embody for the time the whole spirit of romance. But the moment of Fechter’s acting which is stamped most firmly in my recollection was in the last act of _Ruy Blas_. It was not till long afterwards when growing stoutness had robbed him of that grace of form which belonged to his earlier days, that I saw him in the part of _Hamlet_, and it is perhaps hardly fair to test his fitness as a Shakespearean actor by such later impressions. To me, however, that foreign cadence, which linked itself so well with the impersonation of romantic heroism, left a jarring note when it was yoked with the statelier measure of English verse; and it was not till long afterwards, when I saw Irving’s _Hamlet_, that I realised for the first time how much of the subtlety of the character and beauty of the play could be realised within the walls of a theatre.

The playgoer’s memories refuse to obey any strict chronological order. They are rather governed by vividness of impression, which summons with equal distinctness things seen long ago and triumphs of a more recent date. My first vision of Sarah Bernhardt retains always a foremost place in my playgoing experience. It was in Paris in the spring of 1876, and the play was _L’Étrangère_. She was surrounded by a company of rare distinction--Coquelin, Croisette, and Mounet-Sully amongst them. But I remember, as she came upon the stage, that a creature almost of another race seemed suddenly to have invaded, and, at a single stroke, to be dominating, the scene. Her personality appeared at once to announce a new dialect in the language of Art. Her mode of speech and her method of acting left almost unregarded and unremembered the particular language in which the play was written. In virtue of her genius she became at once an international possession, leaving, by comparison, the artists around her almost provincial in style and method. I had previously seen Ristori, and had marvelled at the wonders of her art in Lucrezia Borgia and in Mary Stuart, an art that was struck in a larger mould than Sarah Bernhardt could claim; and I afterwards had to acknowledge the superb force and matchless physical resource which Salvini brought to the theatre. But in neither case does the first impression stand out so vividly in recollection as that first impression of Sarah Bernhardt in Dumas’ play. And yet I remember Sir Frederick Leighton, whose recollections of the theatre went back to an earlier day, telling me that the effect produced by Rachel left Sarah Bernhardt’s art by comparison almost in the region of the commonplace.